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Naval Ship Database
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Database Design, Implementation, and Schema

Defence R&D Canada - Centre for Operational Research and Analysis, Ottawa ON (CAN)

Abstract

This Technical Note documents a database that was designed and implemented to manage a collection of historical data housed by the Maritime Operational Research Team (MORT), which is part of Defence Research and Development Canada’s Center for Operational Research and Analysis (DRDC CORA). The goals of the project included: improving integrity; allowing scalability; simplifying queries across existing datasets; and providing schema flexibility for new incoming data. The solution allows database users to store and analyze data collected by navy ships in the Royal Canadian Navy (RCN). The data stored in the database includes but is not limited to ship identification, ship log records, daily scheduled activities, distance made good, designated homeport, geolocation, readiness status, timezone reference changes, and observed weather. Multiple database storage solutions were compared and SQL Server was selected to be the one most suitable for the Naval Ship Database project. Future projects should consider SQL Server as the primary data storage system.